Happy National Soy Foods Month everyone!! Have you begun celebrating yet? Okay, yeah, I’m not surprised. Few people even know that April is soy foods month, much less “celebrate” it, but since soy is such a big part of many vegans’ diets, I think it’s worth a shout out. Soy is cholesterol-free and low in saturated fat. Studies show that women who eat soy have a lower risk of breast cancer, and that soy may also help prevent prostate and colon cancers. Research also suggests that soy can help your heart, protect against osteoporosis, and even benefit asthma sufferers.

There are lots of other healthy reasons to eat soy, too. But I enjoy soy simply because it’s animal-friendly, super-delicious, and ultra-versatile. It can be used in everything from veggie burgers to soy milks to cheesecakes. A block of tofu may not be too appetizing on its own, but since it acts as a sponge and absorbs the flavors of anything it’s prepared with, you can use it to make Kung Pau tofu, chocolate pudding pie, eggless egg salad, and much more.

My Top Ten Fave Soy-Based Foods

While a healthy vegan diet should include a variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains, it’s good to squeeze in some soy products too—and there are plenty of products to choose from. Whole soy foods like tofu, edamame (soybeans), and tempeh are generally the healthiest, but other soy foods are good options too. Here are ten of my (current) favorite soy foods:

1. Tofurky Sweet Italian Sausages: With baseball season approaching, I’m eager to eat these spicy vegan sausages while watching the Orioles play. They’re the perfect warm-weather food. They’re great grilled or fried and tucked in a bun with ketchup. The manufacturer, Turtle Island Foods, also makes tasty vegan beer brats and kielbasa, but the sweet Italian sausages are the best if you ask me.
2. Sheese Soy Cheese: I like other soy cheeses okay enough (Tofutti makes a decent vegan cream cheese and passable American soy cheese singles) but this Swedish brand is my favorite, hands down. I especially recommend the smoked cheddar style. Sheesh is a little pricey though, and not too many stores carry it yet. But thanks to Pangea, the vegan superstore, everyone can enjoy it.
3. Westsoy Chocolate Soy Shake: Mmmm. Thick and creamy. It’s like melted chocolate ice cream in a glass.
4. Morningstar Farms Grillers Recipe Crumbles: A great alternative to ground beef, with only 80 calories and 2.5 grams of fat per serving. It can be used in everything from tacos to chili to spaghetti sauce to shepherd’s pie. Carnivores can’t even tell the difference!
5. Silk Vanilla Soy Yogurt: It may not sound all that exciting, but if you throw in some defrosted frozen berries or other fruit, it makes a nutritious and delicious breakfast. The family-size container is more economical than single-serving soy yogurts too (less packaging too).
6. White Wave Sesame Peanut Thai-Style Baked Tofu: Toss it with some linguini, peanut butter satay, broccoli, carrots, onions, and you’ve got a simple Thai-style meal without going to a Thai restaurant.
7. Purely Decadent Turtle Trails Ice Cream: Just about every flavor of Purely Decadent or So Delicious dairy-free ice cream is, well, delicious, but I’m partial to anything with chocolate, pralines, and caramel!
8. Boca Burgers: Need I say more? Just about everybody loves these vegan veggie burgers—even meat-eaters. The chik’n patties are tasty too.
9. Gardenburger Meatless Breakfast Sausage: Another food for both vegans and meat-eaters to enjoy together. These savory soy-based sausages have only 60 calories per patty too.
10. Worthington Chic-ketts: Tastes just like chicken! You can pull apart the “log” of mock chicken and eat it straight, or use it in chicken-free salads, sandwiches, soups, and casseroles.

Hmmm, I guess I should have made it a top 100 list since I can still think of many more great soy-based foods.

Which ones are your favorites?

Good news. Several environmental, vegetarian, and animal advocacy groups have just joined forces to form the Veg Climate Alliance. Their goal is to teach people that “a global shift to vegetarianism is necessary to avoid rapidly approaching catastrophic climatic conditions and other environmental threats.”

Amen to that. There is overwhelming evidence linking meat and other animal products to climate change. Of course, the alliance is facing an uphill battle regardless. Global warming has been a hot topic (pun intended) for more than three years now, yet many people—including noted “environmentalists” like Al Gore—still largely ignore the “inconvenient truth” about meat and climate change. The fact is: you have to stop eating animal products if you want to combat climate change and have a livable planet. Here’s why:

• A United Nations report revealed that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes in the world combined. The “livestock sector” is one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide and the single largest source of both methane and nitrous oxide emissions—all potent greenhouse gasses.
• In a February 2009 Canwest News Service article, Chris Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Pennsylvania’s Carnegie Mellon University, said, “Switching to no red meat and no dairy products is the equivalent of (cutting out) 8,100 miles driven in a car … that gets 25 miles to the gallon.”
• The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook by David de Rothschild states that “refusing meat” is “the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint.”
• Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, urges people to have at least one meat-free day a week to help halt global warming but ultimately to go vegetarian.
• When responding to criticism that measures to tackle climate change are partly to blame for the rise in food and energy costs, Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations climate agency, said, “The best solution would be for us all to become vegetarians.”
• An American Journal of Clinical Nutrition report by David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel indicates that it takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make a calorie of animal protein as it does to make a calorie of plant protein. When you think about all the energy-intensive stages it takes to produce meat, eggs, and dairy products, you’ll understand why going vegan makes sense.
• Researchers at the University of Chicago have even found that switching to a vegan diet is more effective in combating climate change than switching from a standard American car to a Prius.

To learn more about climate change and the other ways in which meat, egg, and dairy production degrades the environment, see GoVeg.com.

To say that I don’t quite fit the bill of a domestic terrorist is an understatement at best. When I find a critter in the house, be it ladybug or roach, I take to paper and cup and gently transport my unwelcome houseguest to their more appropriate outdoors abode. I wouldn’t hurt a fly… literally. But according to FBI deputy assistant director and top official in charge of domestic terrorism, John Lewis, as a vegan and animal rights activist, I’m more of a threat to the safety of our country than Timothy McVeigh. “The No. 1 domestic terrorism threat is the eco-terrorism, animal-rights movement.” This is where I bare my fangs and make a threatening hiss! Scared yet?

For a group of individuals who have yet to cause the death of one human or non-human, Environmental Liberation Front (ELF), Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and other environmental and animal rights organization participants seem slightly out of place on the list of our country’s most ominous domestic terrorists. Putting groups that encourage the assassination of doctors who assist in abortions aside, let’s examine one of the many violent hate groups that are child’s play in comparison (all according to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations, of course) – the Ku Klux Klan.

The Klan is responsible for hundreds if not thousands of deaths and acts of extreme violence against African-Americans, whites who defend African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, and other immigrant groups, not to mention all of the acts of vandalism targeted towards businesses owned by a person who falls into any one or these categories. Lynching, shootings, church and synagogue burnings – the Klan is merciless. Recently a woman was fatally shot by Klan members when she backed out of joining at a campsite initiation. Bet those Klan members are turning in their hoods trying to figure out what they need to do to win the spot on top of the domestic terrorist list.

As it stands, our government is more interested in spending this country’s budget on chasing after and prosecuting tree sitters and mink liberators than white supremacists who are actively killing those who don’t look like them or who don’t conform to their ideologies. The Ku Klux Klan is a racist, anti-Semitic movement with a commitment to extreme violence to achieve its goals of racial segregation and white supremacy. Yet, the KKK is less of a threat than ELF and ALF. Come on, how could that possibly NOT make sense?

A quick read over James F. Jarboe’s Congressional Testimony reveals the key. You gotta hit ‘em where it hurts. Jarboe’s speech tallies up the monetary tolls rack up because of acts like logging and fur farm sabotage but no where is there even a hint that one person was even injured or that any life, human or non-human, was targeted. Total after total are quoted with no trace of intent for these eco-terrorists or animal rights activists to target a sentient being.

Animal rights and environmental rights “extremists” threaten lucrative, often times government run and regulated industries: meat, dairy, egg, logging, oil, land development, not to mention the endless number of multi-million dollar businesses that flourish only because they ride the coat tails of these industries. Be it through peaceful protest or direct action, animal rights and environmental activists hurt these industries’ bottom line and affect their consumer market. Most Americans want their cardiovascular disease inducing burgers with a side of chili cheese fries. They need their brand spanking new Urban Sprawl homes built atop clear-cut ancient forests. God forbid they walk or rid a bike to the Star Schmucks on the corner to buy their non-organic, not fairly traded café au lait!

ELF, ALF, et al. aim to restructure all of these opulent American comforts. The KKK couldn’t care less about these issues. They want to destroy people. ELF and ALF aim to save lives. The KKK aims to kill. Eggs, oil, SUVs are objects that have intrinsic market value, value that must be protected. According to our government, protecting people, like the ones the KKK aims to annihilate, comes second to protecting revenue projecting commodities.

Needless to say, sounds like some priority restructuring is long overdue.

According to Vernon Coleman, eating meat has health hazards because along with the meat you may be consuming hormones, drugs and other chemicals that have been fed to the animals before they were killed. No one knows precisely what effect eating the hormones in meat is likely to have on your health. Some farmers use tranquillizers to keep animals calm. When you eat meat you are, inevitably, eating those drugs. In America, over half of all antibiotics are fed to animals and it must not be a coincidence that there is a sharp rise in the percentage of staphylococci infections resistant to penicillin that have gone up from 13% in 1960 to 91% in 1988.

It is also known that vegetarians visit hospitals about 22 % less than meat eaters and have shorter hospital stays. Vegetarians tend to be fitter and healthier than meat eaters. Many of the world’s most successful athletes follow a strictly vegetarian diet.

What is not well known is that meat eating has devastating environmental consequences. Take a look at these statistics that are taken from a website called as peta2.com and then decide for yourself, whether you want to be a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian.

Open Your Eyes to these Shocking Statistics

In the U.S., animals raised for food are fed 70 percent of the corn, wheat, and other grains we grow. The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth.

Land:

Of all agricultural land in the U.S., 80 percent is used to raise animals for food—that’s almost half the total landmass of the lower 48 states.

Water:

Nearly half of all the water consumed in the U.S. for all purposes is used to raise animals for food. It takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of meat, but only 60 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat. A totally vegetarian diet requires 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day.

Pollution:

Raising animals for food causes more water pollution in the U.S. than any other industry because animals raised for food produce 130 times the excrement of the entire human population—87,000 pounds per second! Much of the waste from factory farms and slaughterhouses flows into streams and rivers, contaminating water sources.

Energy:

Of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the U.S., more than one-third is used to raise animals for food. The energy needed to produce the food that a meat-eater would burn in walking a given distance is greater than the energy needed to fuel your car to travel the same distance.

Deforestation:

Each vegetarian saves an acre of trees every year! The tropical rain forests are being decimated to create grazing land for cattle. The space equivalent to seven football fields is destroyed every minute. Fifty-five square feet of rain forest may be razed to produce just one-quarter pound burger.